3.9.08
More so, more so
They were all there — the great and the good. At least, that's how they thought of themselves. How egalitarian, how Christian, being sat at a round table, sharing a meal, they thought. And there were twelve, too, just like the disciples; except that Jesus had deserted this table long ago. Waited on by illegal immigrants, this rotten bunch mumbled insincere thank-yous and put on fake smiles — vestiges of the humility to which they once aspired, but secretly abandoned.
They wore the clothes of clerics; their attire was a sign of goodness. But violence done in the name of good does more damage than violence that can be put down to evil. They left: oblivious; self-justified; happy.
19.8.08
Pillows
I remember that day for messing around on your parents' bed and hitting each other with pillows. And a fine bed it was too, large and neatly made. But everything in your house was too well kept. And how is it that every house smells different? I don't think yours was the one that smelt of pot pourri, but it was something like that. And what an odd couple your parents were. But you were well disciplined; wreckless and terrified in equal measure. Wreckless and terrified you continued for a while, until you became confident — but suspicious. Yes, time transforms — and sometimes inverts — our relationships, just as love in equal measure seeks to delay such transfigurations.
So they learnt, as they must, that they are now old to you: a force loved but spent; once giants that towered over your childish frame — now figures shrunken in your mind's eye, grey, troubled, and silent.
15.8.08
S'il fait beau temps, je demande la pluye
That whirring of the fan, the orange burn of the cathode ray tube, the twang of the degauss, that imagined summer, that uncertain odour, the bounce of that ball, the edge of those bricks, the tragedy of a fallen tree, the face of a friend, the moving away, the mystery of the departure, the chiselled carpet, the screwed up paper, the hurried illumination, the closed door, the drawn curtain, this place, that road, the taped-up tarmac, the illusion of returning, the competition of loving, the disgust of desire, the regrets of repetition, that must of control. The end.
13.8.08
Light in August
At midday we still stand under the constellations, but they are hidden from view by our own star's excess of light. Darkness, the progression towards death, reveals more than the disorienting chromaticism of day. We might call entropy the decay of distance, the limitation of our very standing in a place; standing, without staying still. Trembling, unsure, a hand will grasp your shoulder, sheltering, pretending — loving. Love — a defence and a sacrifice — will always say No to the terror of time.
3.8.08
Witches' Cauldron
23.7.08
Some Promise
- Some distance north and west of here
- some promise offered happiness.
- Across a fog-capped lake you met
- with death: some promise unfulfilled,
- some uncertain surface, yet static, wet.
- In this elision of promise and truth,
- this rupture of expectation, love
- shines through. A promise whose shattered
- gaze undid you; now love reveals love,
- just as an excess overflows and is
- beyond our estimation.
22.7.08
Stinging Nettle
22.7.08
Orange
Sometimes remembering is even harder than forgetting.
We stood in the dark, between an invisible bannister and the promising orange glow of the street outside. In the night we can deceive ourselves that our actions are not quite so real as in the light; the heaviness of that dark duration, the unremarkable successiveness of black, changes a human voice. Separated from your face, the words you uttered assumed some qualities that both forgave and themselves pleaded for forgiveness, as if in anticipation of an imminent crime, an inevitable determination. How could you know I didn't have the power to forgive? I was boxed in that night. You should have known. Someone should have told you. Someone led you on. Things weren't how they used to be. That gap had changed things. In fact, it had changed you. Before, you were happy to corrupt; now, you wanted to own.
Edging closer to the orange, I fumbled in the dark for my shoes. I'd have run home barefoot if I'd known then what I know now. The frosted glass cast ripples of suspicious light on your long blonde hair; your voice became a little more familiar. I laid my fingers on the UPVC handle, which I'd done so many hundreds of times, and you struck up the courage to kiss me, which you'd never done before. And your lips — enthusiastic, sincere, and entirely selfish — were like the tape gun that sealed up the box.
I called in the next day, but you were doing homework.
21.7.08
Nostalgia
This is the same room in which you wrote those quite unhurried messages many years ago. I was Calvin then, and you were no idiot; but we did well, not saying what we should not say, not dressing the nakedness of a new home too quickly. And yet nostalgia set in, even though you'd been so careful, and what was a healthy alienation became a raging contempt. Like a black hole, a place gone but not forgotten, the rage pulled you ever closer to what you were trying to escape. And I told you it was destiny, and you said I'd never warned you about that. Then one day quite soon, reunited on adjacent seats in surroundings I will not recognize, we each caught the other's eye. Silently, but not secretly, you remarked that our adult faces are never quite what we imagined they'd be when we were children. And this thought was our first step towards reconciliation.
18.7.08
Unsaying
What is necessary — what goes without saying.